The Male Gaze is a psudo-derogatory (though generally neutral) term from Gaze theory that describes the tendency of works to assume a male viewpoint even when they do not have a specific narrative Point of View, and in particular the tendency of works to present female characters as subjects of a man's visual appreciation.

One of the most obvious results of Male Gaze is the way a (usually male) director/cameraman's interest in women informs his shots, leading to a focus on breasts, legs, buttocks, and other jiggly bits even when the film isn't necessarily supposed to be a feast for eyes of their admirers. For example, a sex scene between a man and a woman may show more of her body than it does of his, or focus more on her reactions than his (see Right Through His Pants). Alternatively, it could appear in shows that aren't overtly sexual - for example, scenes of bikini-clad female characters talking that emphasize their bodies rather than showing just their heads. This trope canbe used as a legitimate cinematic effect, especially when combined with Point of View. (At which point it may become Eating the Eye Candy, though not necessarily.)

The term also applies in other mediums, such as video games and comic books. During the Dark Age, comic books were (and often still are) perfect examples of the male gaze, with scenes being framed to show off a female character's curves over everything else.

As mentioned above, the term refers more to a technique than an image, and many argue that even works that are classified as Female Gaze, including works made by and for females, still count as male gaze if it's still created from a decidedly male point of view. For example, Magic Mike, despite being toted as a movie full of Female Gaze, is still an example of male gaze because it's a man's perception of what an ideal man is.

Dead Prez's music video to Hip Hop started with a shot of a woman's buttocks, which was then captioned with the words: "Now that we got your attention". Then raps about social warfare.

This is pretty much what Roy Orbison's big hit "Pretty Woman" is all about.

Male-to-male example: The album art◊ for the VENUS song "Wow Wow VENUS" shows DJ Yoshitaka facing Sota Fujimori and looking down at his crotch.

Surprisingly averted in Juvenile's video for Rodeo. It goes behind the scenes at a strip club, showing the difficult lives of the strippers. While there are scenes showing them dancing, the camera focuses on their faces, showing how many of them are sad, bored, worried or stressed.

Deliberately over-invoked in Chilly Gonzolas's video for "You Can Dance." The camera stays locked on the female dancers' butts, bosoms and crotches (all clothed), occasionally intercut with shots of Chilly getting slapped across the face in time with the hand-claps, implying that the whole thing is from his perspective.

Pinball

In Eight Ball Deluxe, one of the playfield images is a woman in tight jeans with her back to the viewer, leaning over the pool table...

The playfield for Bally's Xenon shows a woman with her back to the player, arms upraised.

The sides of the Baywatch cabinet prominently feature the backsides of three female lifeguards, complete with skimpy swimsuits.

Professional Wrestling

Turn on any WWE show later than 1995. Find a woman wrestling and chances are the cameras are focusing on her breasts falling out of her top, jiggling as she moves, or competing for who can get the most buttocks shots. Even more so if she is any competition that is not wrestling, WWE tending to have "bikini contests" and such seemingly just to facilitate this, though they seem to be on their way out since the return to the PG rating.

During a Full Impact Pro falls count anywhere match between Homicide and CM Punk, the camera man, to commentator Prazak's annoyance, became more interested in two nearby strippers performing. Homicide himself soon became more interested in them than Punk too.

"Extreme Expose": The segment being the part in the show where three scantily clad women - one justbarelyover the age of 18 - dance to club music in the ring. It started as the 18-year-old's way to show off how much of an "exhibitionist" she was.

Even though Brooke Adams considered her buttocks her best assets (no pun intended), one of the cameras that followed her seemed more obsessed with them than her.

Subverted and Justified in OVW during a Leid Tapa vs Blossom Twin match, as the camera was being held by Eddy Valiant, whose girlfriend Epiphany was later seen demanding him to stop filming.

Sports

NFL cheerleaders and NBA dancers.

Thanks to Erin Andrews, it has become for common for sideline and courtside reporters to be female.

Very common in the Super Bowl, where most of the national anthem singers are women.

Spotting pretty women in the crowds of sporting events has become such an obvious trope that it has it's own name among cameramen, the "Honey Shot." This article details how it was essentially the brainchild of Andy Sidaris, the director for ABC football broadcasts. Note that some women (Jenn Sterger, Pamela Anderson) have even gained careers from being spotted in sports crowds.

During the 2012 Olympic Games, NBC had to pull an online video called "Bodies in Motion" because its depiction of female athletes was considered objectifying and demeaning. It didn't help that during the women's volleyball matches, the cameramen would occasionally get...distracted.

Tabletop Games

In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, it was common to see published modules describe any female characters (if they existed at all) in detail, usually with terms like "voluptuous" or "svelte", while neglecting to give important male NPCs so much as a hair color.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy